February 14, 1876, Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied for telephone patent
Last modified: February 15, 2021
Seems like the race to file the telephone patent between Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray started on February 14th, 1876 when there was an apparent rush that day to fill and deposit the telephone patent forms for the telephone designs, however, it was too late for Gray an electric engineer founder of Western Electric Manufacturing Company and professor at Oberlin College, according to the records Bell’s lawyer filed #5 application of the day and Gray’s was the #39.
The last 3 days leading to that Monday, February 14 are very controversial. Gray has not told anyone about his invention for transmitting voice when he finally commented about it on February 11th, 1876. Some say that when Bell heard about Gray’s device, he asked his lawyer to start working on the documentation for the design he has been working on for a long time, however it had only been patented by Great Britain who would not accept patents on inventions that were patented in other countries before.
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